Within man lies a deep wondrous spot, to which neither virtue nor vice can reach. Upon which the sun of reason and will never rise. In which the mouth of logic never speaks, the laws and rules are never obeyed, and not a language is used nor a word is ever spoken.It is a distant Kingdom, beyond words and meanings. With everything is a sheer murmur offering wonders in a blink. From the depths of which, suffice a single tone or a flash of mind or a scent of a perfum, to allow rise of emotions, pictures and memories, a rising that will shake our being and open ourselves to things we can neither describe nor materialize even if we used the most refined of phrases or the most skillful of languages.

Tawfiq Al-Hakim.(My humble transalation of the arabic text)

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Sunset Blvd. [1950] .... life or something like it !!!

Joe Gillis: [voice-over] The whole place seemed to have been stricken with a kind of creeping paralysis - out of beat with the rest of the world, crumbling apart in slow motion.

Joe Gillis: You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.Norma Desmond: I *am* big. It's the *pictures* that got small.

Joe Gillis: [narrating] Well, this is where you came in, back at that pool again, the one I always wanted. It's dawn now and they must have photographed me a thousand times. Then they got a couple of pruning hooks from the garden and fished me out... ever so gently. Funny, how gentle people get with you once you're dead.

Joe Gillis: [narrating] The poor dope - he always wanted a pool. Well, in the end, he got himself a pool.Norma Desmond: There once was a time in this business when I had the eyes of the whole world! But that wasn't good enough for them, oh no! They had to have the ears of the whole world too. So they opened their big mouths and out came talk. Talk! TALK!

Joe Gillis: I'm not an executive, just a writer.Norma Desmond: You are... writing words, words, more words! Well, you'll make a rope of words and strangle this business! But there'll be a microphone there to catch the last gurgles, and Technicolor to photograph the red, swollen tongues!

Norma Desmond: We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!

[after hearing that Norma Desmond has come to see DeMille]First assistant director: I can tell her you're all tied up in the projection room. I can give her the brush.Cecil B. DeMille: Thirty million fans have given her the brush. Isn't that enough?

Norma Desmond: No-one ever leaves a star. That's what makes one a star.